When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  I thought about being embarrassed then, in the wake of the emotional storm that left me ravaged like the wreckage after a tropical hurricane, but I couldn’t muster the energy even for that.

  So, instead, I pressed my cheek harder to Dante’s steely pec and wrapped my arms around his torso to hold him close right back.

  When enough time passed that I was certain our skin had turned to prunes, he finally shifted back enough to look down at me, pinching my chin to lever my face up at his.

  “Better?” he asked, eyes solemn.

  I nodded, biting my lips then shrugging weakly. “That was probably the first time you had sex with a woman who went to pieces in your arms afterward.”

  He didn’t laugh or brush it off the way I thought he would. His thumb swept over the corner of my mouth, reminding me of the fact my makeup was probably running down my cheeks, and he said, “It was the first time for a lot of things, Elena. None of them bad.”

  I’d never told him explicitly what my surgery had been for, but he’d spent the last four weeks watching me convalesce. Knowing Dante, he probably had a decent guess of the ailments I’d suffered from.

  I forced myself to swallow the whimper that rose in my throat, done with weakness.

  As if reading my mind, he bent his legs so he could drop closer to my face. “Sometimes there is more strength in tears than in austerity.”

  I laughed limply. “How do you always know what to say? Is there some kind of class for that?”

  His lips twitched. “It’s my natural-born charm. But it’s also this. Whatever you and I are made of, it’s the same. You don’t have to be good with me, right or true in any sense, but especially the conventional. You can be your worst self with me, because Elena, it’s the contradictory nature of your soul that intoxicates me.”

  Dio mio, how was any woman supposed to resist such stark and brilliantly cut honesty from a man? He offered his sincerity to me like a jewel, this priceless treasure I wanted to lock away inside me forever.

  No matter what he said, we weren’t a thing that was made to last. We were too opposite, too set in our different ways. This was nothing but animal attraction, something I was experiencing for the first time in my life, something I was no longer willing to resist.

  But I could learn from the people I respected, and I’d come to understand I respected him. His candor and loyalty, his complete lack of fear around anything emotional or physical. He took on the chaos of life head-on and laughed while he did it.

  I hoped that whatever happened, I’d be able to ingest a little of that before our time was done.

  “Aren’t you going to ask about my breakdown?” I asked, my own self-hatred peeking through again.

  He scowled then sighed, turning me around with one hand as he reached for the shampoo with the other. “No. If you want to share, you can. But I think I have a few ideas. The adrenaline crash alone would justify it. I’m just happy to have shared it with you. Being able to be there for you is a privilege I have the feeling you don’t afford to many people.”

  When his strong fingers began to knead my scalp, the citrus scent of him intensified by the product he worked into my hair, I groaned raggedly. “That feels so good.”

  “There are many things I can and will make you feel,” he promised darkly. “Now that I’ve had you, I won’t let you go until I’ve had my fill, and I have a feeling that will take a very long time.”

  I closed my eyes as he pulled me back against his body, the burgeoning swell of his shaft pressing against my butt cheeks. When he tipped my head back on his shoulder to let the water carry away the suds, and one of his calloused hands followed the path down the front of my naked body, I gave myself permission to surrender once again to sensation.

  Because I knew, even if Dante didn’t, that no fire ever burned eternally, and one as hot as the inferno between us would burn out before we knew it.

  So I’d enjoy it––the pleasure, the bravery, the discovery––while I could.

  And hope that after everything, I wouldn’t be bitter the way I was after Daniel left me. I’d be changed for the better from letting Dante storm past the walls I’d let no one behind before.

  ELENA

  I’d almost assumed Dante would try to keep me from work the following morning because it was something Daniel might have done and even Seamus.

  But he didn’t.

  When I’d woken up in my bed alone because I’d insisted on it after showering with Dante, needing the space to shore up the walls around my heart, I’d prepared to fight him about my need to work despite the chaos of the previous day. I was focused on it to the exclusion of all else as I showered again and readied myself for the day with my arsenal of Chanel cosmetics.

  It was easier to concentrate on a possible confrontation than it was to acknowledge the monumental way our relationship had shifted last night.

  The monumental way I had shifted.

  I’d entered the living room dressed in my favorite classic black Dolce & Gabbana high-waisted pencil skirt and slightly sheer white silk blouse, my hair pinned back in an artfully loose bun, my six-inch Valentino pumps at my feet. I wore my well-groomed professionalism the way knights had worn their suits of armor, ready to do battle with whatever might face me during the day.

  And I was ready to fight Dante about my right to go to work.

  “I’m going in to the office this morning,” I’d stated strongly right off, holding my Prada purse in front of me like a shield.

  Dante lounged at the patio table through the open French doors even though it was almost November and the wind was icy, wearing a black cashmere sweater over a white button-up. He looked quintessentially European, the Italian language newspaper in one hand and a cup of espresso in the other.

  He’d looked over at me with slightly raised brows and inclined his head slowly, addressing me as if I was an infant. “Yes, okay. It is a weekday.”

  I blinked. “Well, yes. So, I have to work.”

  He blinked right back, head cocked as he narrowed his eyes at me, assessing me. “Yes, that is typically how it happens.”

  I nodded curtly, thrown off by his easy acceptance. “Okay, I’m leaving, then.”

  “Buona giornata,” he called mildly as he turned back to his newspaper.

  I blinked at the back of his head, struggling with the feeling pushing up through the cage of my ribs.

  It took me a moment to identify it as I made my way to the elevator.

  Disappointment.

  I’d expected him to fight me about it so I could find him wanting, roast him for being misogynistic like so many Italian men could be, wanting to keep me in the home under his thumb and assuming I’d accept that just because we’d had intercourse.

  But also, an even smaller voice in the depths of my lockdown soul whispered that I wanted him to fight me about it because it would show that he cared.

  I struggled with the dueling sensations as I got in the elevator and rode down to the basement where Adriano usually waited to take me to work.

  Seeing him in the black Beamer brought me mild satisfaction, and I smiled at him as I got into the backseat.

  “Good morning, Addie.”

  “Hey,” he grunted, completing our morning ritual. He wasn’t exactly the most verbose man. Then, as he pulled out of the parking garage, he met my eye in the rearview mirror and added, “Glad you’re good after yesterday.”

  Warmth moved through me like a summer’s breeze. “Thank you, me too.”

  “Acted like a real donna,” he told me with admiration clear in his gravelly voice. “Made us proud.”

  Donna like the queen in a chess set or the queen on a playing card.

  Donna like a female boss.

  Bruno had called me that a few times, and Frankie. I hadn’t noticed until then what a compliment it was and how much it meant coming from men like these.

  I leaned forward to pat his boulder shoulder. “You guys are rubbing off on me.”

  It c
ould have been wishful thinking, but I thought I saw a faint blush stain his deep olive-brown cheeks.

  When we arrived at my office building, I prepared to alight from the car at the curb, but Adriano didn’t pull over the way he normally did. Instead, he idled beside orange cones and a sign that pronounced the cordoned-off area a construction zone.

  He rolled down the window and yelled at a passing man. “Hey, do me a solid and make space in the cones, yeah?”

  The twentysomething hipster he’d called to gaped at him, obviously disconcerted by the sight of the massive Italian man leaning out the window at him.

  “Well?” Addie grunted, his thick brow pulled low over his eyes.

  Instantly, the kid shot into motion and made space in the cones so Adriano could pull the car into the space and park. He even moved the cones back into place after we were settled.

  Addie moved toward him on his lumbering gait, the kid visibly cowering, then offered a handshake with a bill folded discreetly against his palm.

  “Grazie,” he offered with a smile that was anything but friendly on his rough-featured face.

  The kid accepted the handshake with a tremulous smile and took off.

  When Addie turned to face me, there was laughter in his eyes.

  I shook my head at him. “You eat children’s dreams for dinner, don’t you?”

  He cackled lowly as he escorted me to the door. I didn’t say anything when he followed me into the lobby, but when he went to step through the security barricade with me I held up a hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  Reaching into an inner pocket in his leather jacket, he produced a security badge with the name Adrian Smith on it.

  Despite myself, I laughed. “You couldn’t think of anything more original than Smith?”

  He shrugged.

  “Okay, but why do you have that? I’m safe in the building,” I insisted, crossing my arms to level him with my coolest stare.

  “Boss’s orders,” he responded.

  I was really coming to hate that phrase.

  “What’re you going to do? Sit outside my office all day?”

  He shrugged again. “Not if I don’t gotta. You’re supposed to text if you need to go somewhere.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And if I don’t check in like a toddler?”

  “Your funeral,” was the response.

  We stared at each other, Addie’s face totally blank, mine a mask of indignation.

  “New boyfriend, Lombardi?” Bill, one of the associates on the Salvatore case with me, called as he passed through the check-in security beside us.

  I shot him my middle finger.

  Addie grinned. “Yeah, we really are rubbin’ off on you.”

  A breath huffed between my lips as I tried to expel some of my exasperation. “Okay, I have no plans to leave the office until this afternoon. I’ll text. But for God’s sake, please do not escort me up to my office like a child. This is my job. I’d like to retain whatever professionalism I can still muster.”

  He blinked at me, and for a moment, I thought he was unmoved, but then he reached out and patted me––hard––on the shoulder in agreement. I watched him turn on his heel and walk back out of the building, where he leaned against the glass wall beside the doors and lit up a smoke.

  I sighed, knowing that was as good as it was going to get.

  But as I moved through security and into the elevator, a little smile crept over my face.

  Because apparently, not only did Dante care about my safety but the guys did too.

  And that felt better than it should have.

  I was eating lunch in the conference room while I tried to figure out what to do about Dante’s illegal gambling and racketeering charges when movement at the door caught my eye.

  “Hi, Elena,” Bambi said almost bashfully, a curtain of thick blond hair sweeping over her shoulder to partially hide her face. “I’m sorry for disturbing you at work, but I-I wanted to continue the rest of that conversation we never got to have.”

  “Of course,” I offered immediately, shifting my papers and the plastic bowl of salad around on the table to make room for her to sit opposite me. “I thought I gave you my number?”

  “You did, but I thought I should talk to you in person.” She sat down with her back to the door and then peered over her shoulder through the glass at the lawyers walking through the hall and got up to shift to a chair on my side so she could see the hall without turning.

  Huh.

  My interest piqued, I crossed my legs and folded my hands in my lap. “I’m all yours.”

  She chewed her lip almost frantically as she looked down at her hands. “I’m not married, and I’m not a widow. Did you know that? That’s why Dante takes care of Aurora and me. When I had her out of wedlock, my parents…they weren’t happy.”

  No, I could imagine they wouldn’t have been.

  When I was briefly pregnant with Daniel’s baby before I lost it to an ectopic episode, Mama had been kind about the fact we weren’t married. I wondered if that was because I’d always assumed it was just a matter of time until I became Daniel’s wife or if Mama was less rigidly traditional than I might have given her credit for.

  I knew women in Napoli who had been cast out of their family homes for having sex before matrimony, let alone giving birth to a baby out of wedlock.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Bambi even though the words felt trite.

  It made me furious that women were held to such impossible standards, and I ached for the sweet blue-eyed woman who’d had to go through it all alone.

  “Grazie,” she said graciously. “Aurora was two when we met Dante. My own brother wasn’t talking to me, but he let me clean his house for some extra money, and Dante was there one day. He saw Aurora first playing pretend with a feather duster, and he crouched down to play with her.” There was a dreamy quality to her gaze, a soft smile pressed between her lips. I wondered if Bambi was in love with Dante and hoped very much, for reasons I didn’t want to delve into, that she was not. “Later, he found me in the bathroom cleaning a toilet, and he was so big he barely fit in the doorframe. At first, I thought maybe he was going to yell at me for bringing Aurora to work, but he only asked me for my name and if I was available on Thursdays to clean his place.”

  She laughed, shaking her head. “I had no idea what to make of his mixed accent, of his authority and his charm. It was such an alien combination. But I agreed. He was a capo. What else was I going to do?”

  I sympathized, having been put into a similar but much more intense situation by Dante before when he forced me to move in with him.

  “One day of the week became two and then three, and then suddenly, he was employing me full time to take care of his home. He found Aurora and me a better apartment close by and insisted I pay rent to him at a very obviously reduced price. It was a dream come true, really.”

  It sounded like it, the start of a fairy tale where the pauper fell in the love with the dark prince.

  I was startled as I realized that in a sense, that was very much like my own story with the mafioso. I’d been born poor in the slums of Naples; Dante was a duke’s son in the moors of England. Even though I had raised myself up independent of him, his case would still bring me the money and success I’d always wanted, and that was its own kind of happily ever after.

  Wasn’t it?

  I didn’t dare hope for anything more.

  Though by the stain on Bambi’s cheeks, it was obvious she did. “My brother even started talking to me again because of Dante. I owe him everything, really. Which is why I’m here.” She fixed me with those enormous blue eyes filled with stern resolve. “I need a lawyer.”

  “Okay,” I agreed easily, wanting to help her. “Why?”

  “My…There’s a man in my life, and lately, he’s been scaring me.” Her voice quavered. “Scaring Aurora.”

  Anger roared through me. “Has he hurt you?”

  “Only once,” she admitted, c
hewing her lip so hard it bled. “But I went to the hospital and everything, so they have it on record. He punched me in the gut, and I couldn’t stand straight for two days.”

  “Is he… a member of the Family?” I asked lowly, wondering if that was why she had gone to such lengths to hide her plea for help.

  I didn’t care who it was hurting her and scaring Aurora. I’d do everything in my power to get them free of the bastard.

  Her nod was slight, but it was the fear in her eyes that settled it for me.

  “Can you tell me who it is?” I pressed softly, leaning forward to gently tap her knee with my fingers. “It could help me keep you safe.”

  Frantically she shook her head. “No. I don’t want to tell you who it is. We don’t have that attorney-client silence thing, right?”

  “No,” I admitted. “If it’s a problem with one of Dante’s men, it would be a conflict of interest for me. And it’s a domestic case, so I’ll have to refer you to someone who covers that area of the law.”

  “Okay, that’s kinda what I figured,” she admitted. “I don’t know many law types, and you’ve always been so good to Aurora and me. I just knew you would help.”

  Her praise warmed me, and I felt horrible for my momentary bout of jealousy.

  “Have you considered asking Dante for some time off so you can get away while we sort this out?” I suggested. “It might get ugly with this guy before we can file a restraining order.”

  “I could do that if it gets bad,” she agreed. “But I hate to leave Dante in a lurch.”

  “He would understand,” I promised because I knew he would.

  The heartless capo I’d made him out to be at our first meeting was only a mirage. The real Dante might have had the flat black eyes of a criminal, but he had a heart of gold for those he cared about.